


the nodding golden tansy

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Gen, Post Advent Children, Recovery, cloud is doing okay, ghost sephiroth, herbs, mental health, sephiroth is dead and that's the least of his problems, the will to live
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 21:47:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19839136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: “You think this troubles me?”“Yes,” said Cloud, without looking up from his tea.





	the nodding golden tansy

**Author's Note:**

> I keep gravitating toward nature imagery in this fandom, don't I? Well, it's appropriate.
> 
> This was originally written for the fictober 2018 prompt that constitutes the first sentence of the fic.

“You think this troubles me?”

“Yes,” said Cloud, without looking up from his tea. It was a good cup, pinkish-yellow, brewed from clover heads and spruce tips with a touch of tansy, all of which he’d made a game of gathering from the seat of his bike all day, without ever slowing down.

He let the ghost simmer in outrage for the span of a long, peaceful sip, then went on: “Being dead. Still existing. Having nobody to haunt but me. I’d ask which part you meant but how would you choose, you hate all of it.”

He contemplated the wind tossing the yellow tansy-heads against the last pink blush of sunset for a few seconds, then glanced toward where Sephiroth had last been.

Surprisingly, he hadn’t flickered out in a huff.

He crossed his arms, though, huffily. He was wearing the coat, today, but the sword was not in evidence. “And it doesn’t trouble _you?_ ”

“Being haunted?” Cloud shrugged. “I’d prefer somebody else, but better you than…oh, Hojo.” He took a smaller sip of tea. “It does sometimes get boring without a distraction, on long runs I’ve done before.”

He preferred solving that problem with things like his tea-on-the-go game, which even now that he never wiped out trying for an elusive sprig of some interesting herb, and rarely missed a snatch or slice, occasionally went excitingly wrong.

Usually when he misidentified something, but occasionally when he had a significant hole in his herb-lore and only _thought_ what he was drinking was safe, even though he was technically right about what it _was_.

He preferred to make his own entertainment, and it wasn't hard. But he wasn’t going to feed Sephiroth’s ego by acknowledging he was making anything worse.

In some ways, Sephiroth really _was_ the least stressful company he could have. There was absolutely no need to worry about hurting his feelings, or not living up to his expectations. Early on, the ghost had kept trying to get him killed by pulling him into the Lifestream at critical moments in fights or during tricky bits of driving, but either he’d since used up the energy needed to pull off such attacks, or Cloud had gotten better at hanging onto his own body.

Or Aerith had done something.

Or, possibly, Sephiroth was biding his time for when Cloud had his guard down in a situation he really _wouldn’t_ survive. But he was keeping a Phoenix Down in the auto-dispensing bracer Vincent had gotten him, and it would be hard for an intangible spirit to engineer a situation that wouldn’t cover, considering Cloud's power level.

Last time they’d fought within the Lifestream Cloud had won easily, anyway. Killing him couldn’t possibly accomplish anything to Sephiroth’s benefit. Though spite might be worth it to him.

Sephiroth’s attempts to _upset_ him got through sometimes, of course, but more and more it was like pressing on a healing bruise, the sweet ache of no real harm at all, of knowing you were stronger than whatever had marked you, and only going to go on getting better and stronger still.

“...you’re bluffing.” There was no certainty in the spectral voice.

“Maybe. But I _know_ you are. _Everything_ bothers you because you hate everything, because that’s all you have left.” Cloud finished his tea. “I don’t really understand why you bother,” he reflected, staring at the wet remnants of the stewed herbs that had found their way into the bottom of the cup. “I think at this point I’d rather just be dead.”

He’d been close, that day in Midgar after leaving Zack on the cliffs, when Tifa had found him. So close to having nothing left but lies and hate, even grief abandoning him, and sinking under the weight of that and Sephiroth. He’d had very little real interest in staying alive, even after Tifa gave him back his name, even if he hadn’t yet wanted to die, either. Hate could keep you moving, but it wasn’t enough to live on.

That had come later. Things worth living for.

“How do you know I _am_ bothering, Cloud?” The ghost’s voice grew vague and huge, reverberating, flat, more Jenova and less himself. “How do you know you're not imagining me? Just sitting here, talking to yourself?”

Cloud shrugged, rinsed the cup with a splash of water from his canteen and drank that, too, before stowing it away in the saddlebag it had come from. “Then you’re just a memory.”

He got up, kicked dirt over the fire, and shook out his sleeping bag to make sure nothing venomous had crawled inside. On his own, he didn’t bother with tents when it was clear, or even always in the face of mild rain. “I know how to deal with them.”

He crawled into the sleeping bag, settled into the springy turf with a wriggle of his shoulders, and then glanced across the wide blade of his sword, which lay between him and the banked firepit.

Sephiroth was still standing there at the far edge of the camp, in full living color even though the light had all run out but the stars. Not being real sometimes had a strange way of making a person look like the most real thing in the world.

Cloud propped his cheek on one hand. “Did you ever actually have anything to live for in the first place, though?”

That would make it hard to tell the difference, probably, as you lost pieces. He remembered losing pieces. He knew.

“I did.” No certainty at all. Not even a good counterfeit. “Once.”

Cloud raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

He sounded like he _wanted_ to believe what he was saying, though, which was unusual. He hadn’t really showed many emotions, since he first started showing his incorporeal face, that weren’t spite. “Tell me about it.”

A challenge. Details or it didn’t happen.

Sephiroth swallowed with a throat that didn't exist to actually tighten, and looked away, out into the dark where the tansy field lay hidden, his fists closed tight around nothingness.

“…I don’t remember.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that Cloud's tea is not entirely safe to drink and his tea game is stupid and reckless; he has superhuman toughness and access to Heal materia which instantly counteracts toxicity, so he can afford it. Tansy is a traditional medicine used fairly effectively against intestinal parasites and in mosquito repellent, but it _is_ also poison to humans, just...less so. 
> 
> (It's also a traditional abortifacient and has other medical applications, as well as making a good yellow dye, but its utility against parasites seems most relevant here. 😉)


End file.
